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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/23779015">Substituting a Gesture for a Conversation</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/pearlcaddy/pseuds/pearlcaddy'>pearlcaddy</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Anne with an E (TV)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Canon Compliant, F/M, POV Gilbert Blythe, Season 3 Finale, Shirbert</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-04-22</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-04-22</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-02 20:53:24</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,446</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/23779015</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/pearlcaddy/pseuds/pearlcaddy</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>It was as if his heart had been smashed into a brick wall. “What letter?”</p><p>Every decision he had made for the past several months—not posting a take-notice, courting Winnie, not mentioning Winnie before the fair, asking Anne at the ruins, not trying harder to talk to her in-person afterwards, not telling anyone aside from Bash and Miss Stacy about Toronto—he had made because he knew Anne didn’t care for him in that way.</p><p>Surely there wasn’t a letter somewhere out there that said a sentence he’d never dreamed of hearing? A sentence that would have changed everything?</p><p>Gilbert's thoughts during that glorious final Shirbert sequence of 3x10.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Gilbert Blythe &amp; Anne Shirley, Gilbert Blythe/Anne Shirley</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>12</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>261</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Substituting a Gesture for a Conversation</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>I've rewatched this sequence so many times that Netflix has created a "rewatch your favorite scenes" category for me specifically for this show, so I figured I had to write this.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>To be perfectly honest, if anyone had asked Gilbert Blythe before this moment what he thought of Diana Barry, one of the primary words that would have come to mind was “mild-mannered.”</p><p>It wasn’t that he thought she didn’t have strong emotions—he’d seen her vehemently come to Anne’s defense, and he doubted that anyone could be bosom friends with Anne without a passionate temperament and a firm backbone.</p><p>But Diana had always been unfailingly polite and proper to <em>him</em>, which was part of why he had never really noticed her until she’d entered Anne’s orbit. Even then, his main thoughts of Diana had been a question, something he had occasionally and jealously pondered whenever he and Anne were fighting. What was it about Diana Barry that gave her and Anne such an easy friendship, that bonded them so firmly? He’d assumed that it was a balancing act: Diana’s gentleness tempering Anne’s … Anne-ness, Diana the water to Anne’s fire, each girl possessing unique qualities that balanced out the other’s. But it turned out that he’d underestimated how much they had in common.</p><p>They shared a deep and singular ability to eviscerate a man with a single look and tone of voice.</p><p>“So you simply never bothered to speak to Anne about any of this.”</p><p>“Had I had the opportunity to, I would have.” Had Anne not told her about his letter? “In fact, I-I went over—"</p><p>But Diana furiously cut him off. “You’ve had every opportunity, for years! Admit it—you’ve been smitten with Anne ever since she first came to Avonlea and smashed her slate over your head.” Not true: he’d been smitten with Anne since she’d given her first passionate poetry reading in class. The slate had simply confirmed that he would never be smitten with anyone else. But <em>he</em> hadn’t even known his feelings at the time. How on earth had Diana?</p><p>“There have been countless clues.” Countless? Surely he’d managed to hide some of his feelings? He distinctly remembered congratulating himself numerous times over the years for not staring at Anne quite as often or long as he wanted to.</p><p>“And you certainly can’t deny you were beguiled by her at dance practice”—alright, maybe pulling Anne out of formation, staring tenderly at her for an entire dance, and then staring tenderly at her after the dance hadn’t been his <em>most </em>subtle moment—“even though it turns out you were secretly courting a mystery debutante who you had the temerity to step out with at the county fair with no word of warning.” Who was he meant to have warned? No one had established any interest in whether or not he was courting.</p><p>“Then you show up at the ruins after exams and demand to know how Anne feels about you and give her all of thirty seconds to decide her <em>entire future!</em>” He felt a brief flash of hot shame. He had wondered the day after the exams whether it had been unfair to tell her in that way, to ask her to make his decision for him. But he’d convinced himself that if she hadn’t felt anything for him, which she clearly hadn’t, then it was an easy decision and no trouble to her heart aside from the awkwardness of rejecting him. A tiny and quickly silenced voice within him had tried to point out that it wasn’t fair—if their places had been swapped, it would have been an easy question for him to answer because he’d loved her since he saw her heroically, recklessly putting out the fire in the Gillis house. But just because he had known his feelings when he came to the ruins didn’t mean he should have expected the same of her.</p><p>“And worst of all, you callously ignored the letter Anne wrote to you, even though she told you <em>she loved you</em>!”</p><p>It was as if his heart had been smashed into a brick wall. “What letter?”</p><p>Every decision he had made for the past several months—not posting a take-notice, courting Winnie, not mentioning Winnie before the fair, asking Anne at the ruins, not trying harder to talk to her in-person afterwards, not telling anyone aside from Bash and Miss Stacy about Toronto—he had made because he knew Anne didn’t care for him in that way.</p><p>Surely there wasn’t a letter somewhere out there that said a sentence he’d never dreamed of hearing? A sentence that would have changed everything?</p><p>“Diana, what letter!?”</p>
<hr/><p>Gilbert was sprinting through Charlottetown with the kind of flustered panic that he knew could only lead to wrong turns and delays that he couldn’t possibly afford.</p><p>But how on earth could he be calm?</p><p>There apparently existed in the universe, unacceptably unread by him, a letter that said that Anne loved him.</p><p>And, though Diana wasn’t sure how Anne could have so misinterpreted his own letter—she had only gotten a quick, vague secondhand account of it—he knew that Anne had no idea how he really felt about her. That he wasn’t engaged. That he wasn’t leaving the country.</p><p>But above all else, the thing that powered the franticness of his footsteps, the thing that would have made him run this desperately even if he didn’t have a train to catch, was the word “temerity.” It had rung an alarm bell for him as soon as Diana had said it: it didn’t strike him as a word Diana would just casually use (though, granted, if there was one thing he had learned today it was that he knew nothing about Diana Barry). No, it seemed distinctly like an Anne word, which made him suspect it was a sentence that Diana had quoted from Anne, which made him think of Anne being surprised by Winnie at the fair, which made him think of Anne hurt and jealous and he would never forgive himself for causing that—</p><p>Wrong alley. <em>Focus, Blythe. You’ll have hours to chastise yourself on the train to Toronto. Right now, you have a very short time to learn some damn communication skills and find Anne.</em></p>
<hr/><p>As he charged up the path to Blackmore House, he wondered what he would do if Anne was out. Which she likely would be—he couldn’t imagine that his Anne, new to living in Charlottetown, wouldn’t have immediately gone on a walk to explore the city, and there was no way he would be able to find her in time. Even if she was in the house but up on the top floor, he wasn’t sure that there was really enough time to summon her and talk to her before he had to run right back to the—</p><p>He stopped short in front of the porch.</p><p>Impossibly, illogically, there was Anne.</p><p>He realized as soon as he saw her that he had, for some reason, been expecting her to be wearing her braids and her green dress. Of course she wasn’t—she was a young lady now, and she was dressed the part with a full-length dress and adult silhouette and she was glorious and</p><p>staring at him.</p><p>She set down her trunk, seemingly dazed by his presence, and started down the steps towards him as if at half speed.</p><p>He wanted to ask where she was going, or to compliment her, or say anything, but he was out of breath. Maybe from the run, but mostly from her.</p><p>She stopped in front of him, and he couldn’t help but notice that it was the closest to him she’d ever stood, aside from a few hugs and handshakes, and that time at the Christmas tree. Her gaze was open and inviting, not the way it had been for the past few weeks with the spectre of Winnie hanging between them.</p><p>He tried to think of what to say. How to condense his whole letter—his whole year, really—into a quick sentence. But when had words ever really worked for them?</p><p>He reached out tentatively, cupping her cheek with his hand. Giving her a chance to yell at him or reject him or back away, his gaze seeking permission. Her eyes traced the journey his hand took to her cheek, and then went right up to meet his eyes again, the openness and acceptance in them unwavering. Answering yes. And so he dove in and finally, finally kissed her.</p><p>Her lips immediately moved against his, gently and perfectly, and he felt her hand delicately resting on his chest. She liked this. She liked him? She loved him?</p><p>As he pulled away, her lips formed a small, dazed smile. He was contemplating pinching himself—had he really just kissed the girl of his dreams?—only to be distracted when she let out a small noise of pain. He glanced down at her wrist, where her own fingers were pinching.</p><p>“I just had to check. I have a very good imagination, so I just had to be sure… this… is real.” She was staring at him with such surprise and adoration, still in a daze, and he heard Diana’s words again. “… she told you she loved you!” It seemed impossible that he could put that look on the face of this fierce, intelligent, imaginative, kind, loyal, beautiful <strike>girl</strike> woman.</p><p>“Anne, I have to know. Do you truly have feelings for <em>me</em>?”</p><p>She just looked at him for a moment. Maybe she felt the same way he had—that there were so many words that had been invented for moments like these, words that both of them could spell masterfully, but that neither of them had ever been any good at saying directly to one another, and the easiest way to properly communicate was—</p><p>—for her to put her lips on his. He couldn’t agree more.</p><p>In that moment, he finally understood why people spoke of hearts bursting from happiness, because he felt very sure that his heart had been firmly pushed out of his body to make room for all the warm, bright, expansive joy now filling his chest. He wrapped his arms around her and pulled her closer, deciding that there should never be any more distance between the two of them than there was now.</p><p>The very unwelcome chime of the noon bells cut through his delirious haze.</p><p>He pulled away, trying not to give in to the gentle hand cupping the back of his head. “Twelve. I have to go.”</p><p>“But--but you just got here. Where are you going?” His heart was promptly shoved out of his chest again at the idea of her not wanting him to go.</p><p>“Toronto. U of T.” He felt a thrill at her shocked, congratulatory smile. “I still have a long way to go and it’s imperative I arrive today.” Was it? Did he need to go to university? He knew he’d had a reason that he was very passionate and serious about, but at the moment it was hard to remember anything that wasn’t Anne and her smiles and her kisses.</p><p>Though her smile was now replaced with mild confusion. “Alright then. So, goodbye?”</p><p>He heard the question behind goodbye—what had the kisses meant, and therefore what did goodbye mean? Had these kisses meant that they were closing the chapter on their childhood feelings for one another—goodbye schoolyard love? Had they meant the start of a new chapter on a proper adult courtship—goodbye only temporarily as we are cruelly separated by circumstance but we will do lots of kissing when next we meet? There wasn’t time for a full, proper conversation in which she revealed all of her feelings and hopes and desires, and he assured her of his own. (Well, technically, “marry me?” didn’t take very long to say, but it didn’t yet seem like the time and place.) Why hadn’t they had more time? How could he have this conversation without having this conversation?</p><p>He gently seized both her hands and placed a languid kiss on them, substituting a gesture for a conversation. A kiss on the lips could have multiple meanings, but a kiss to both hands could only be meant romantically; he felt sure that that was the kind of thing Anne would say. If her answering smile was any indication, they were somehow, finally, on the same page.</p><p>“Pen pals?”</p><p>Her laugh broke the spell that had settled over them. There was his Anne under that new hairstyle and dress and silhouette. “Likely you’ll recall I happen to have a very nice fountain pen.” Before he could get lost in their banter—and oh how he wanted to get lost in it—a whinnying sound from an approaching carriage reminded him once again of the urgency of his travel.</p><p>“I have to run. Left my bags on the train.” As they rushed towards the carriage, Diana descended from it and Gilbert could hear her and Anne squealing, a delighted sound that lifted his heart.</p><p>Mr. Barry transferred the carriage to him, and he swung up into the seat, ready to begin his journey west. How long would it be before he was this close to his Anne again? She was staring at him with a joyful expression that he’d never dreamed he could be responsible for. And yet he was about to begin traveling a thousand miles away from her—who knew when he would next be able to kiss those lips? Surely it just made good sense to get in a couple more kisses now, while he was still so close? He couldn’t really be expected to restrain himself when the love of his life was looking at him like that. He swung out of the carriage, catching her easily and kissing her twice—only twice! surely he deserved an award for his restraint.</p><p>He squeezed her hand as he pulled away, desperate for one last bit of contact. “I’ll write to you,” he said, only to find that she was saying the same at the same time, because apparently all it took were years of misunderstandings and five kisses to get them in sync.</p><p>She laughed, carefree in a way he’d never been so lucky to see before. “I have follow-up questions.”</p><p>“So do I.” <em>Will you marry me? Can the wedding be now?</em> He needed to pull himself away from her before he couldn’t.</p><p>The sooner he got on the train, the sooner he could pen his first letter to her, and if she noticed that his letter had been eagerly posted from a town only a couple of stops away from Charlottetown rather than from Toronto, then what of it?</p><p>After all, he was known for his temerity.</p>
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